1. For a vid I am vaguely contemplating making, I am looking for a triumphant saving-the-world type song - the sort of song you might vid women kicking ass to, if that makes sense. (The Eurythmics "I Saved the World Today" is topically right, but way too regretful, sadly.)

2. I am currently applying both a mineral sunscreen (mostly suspended in oil) and an oil-based bug deterrent (citronella, lemongrass, etc, in an oil + beeswax base). So my question is, in which order should I apply these things? Should I wait for a bit between them? The internet is full of answers to this question that presume DEET, which, like, ha, as if, I have tried many brands of DEET at work in the past and they all make me cough and cough and cough. So then I stopped using them, but I still had a ridiculous asthma attack at a state fair last year when someone sprayed it over their shoulder directly into my face. THANKS, assholes.

FWIW, if you're looking for bug sprays, I've previously been able to use permethrin-based insect repellant - the kind you soak or spray onto clothes and let dry - without any skin reaction. It's one of those things I only do if there's a really serious bug problem, or I'm going to be outside all the time, because I have to wear gloves and a face mask to apply the spray, but once it's on and dried I launder it once and then it's fine for me.

3. Why is it that, when I rewatch Babylon 5, I always end up rewatching "Infection" even though I know it will hurt me? I mean, okay, I am that kind of completist about fandoms, but I've been happily skipping the A plot of "Believers" (except for Kosh's scene) and "TKO" for years now. I don't know why I'm sitting here right now watching Ilya Kuryakin as a space archaeologist. I could be rewatching River Song right now! Who wins in a space-archaeologist-off by approximately all the points ever.

Brief details: It's not a vid for the yuletide challenge, it's a vid of the yuletide challenge. 191 sources, all of them yuletide fandoms.

I still can't believe we did this. We spent eight months on it, combing the yuletide archive, finding source, watching entire television shows in a single week. We looked at more than 230 sources, many of which we'd never even heard of before we began the project. And we fell in love with yuletide over and over again in the process.

So for thingswithwings's birthday yesterday, I decided to combine two of her great loves: board games and Stargate Atlantis. I thought that I might be able to design a Stargate-themed board game all her own. And here is thingswithwings's present, Stargate Atlantis: Master Detective, which is a graft of SGA onto the basic framework of a game of Clue. So, yes, Hermiod in Teyla's Room with the Drone Weapon.

How I made the game, low-res jpeg shots of the cards and board, and the assembly file with high-res versions if you want to build your own SGA Clue game ( under this here cut )

So there you go: the story of how I clearly went a little bit over the top. Maybe.

1. There is nothing more awesome than coming back from class + long day of class + other class and meetings and things to awesome thinky comments on a post. However, I now have to spend time doing class-related things, so. More thinky later.

2. graycastle and I got together to watch "Travelers," right, and we were meeting at a cafe. I actually saw her on the way there, though, walking a half block behind her. "graycastle!" I called. No response. "graycastle!" Nothing. "John is a robot!" She turned right around, though she swears she couldn't consciously understand what I was saying.

3. Alsoalso: here is the danger of hanging out with graycastle: cracked out story ideas. These now include:- The one where John's father is an itinerant tuba player living in an apartment in the Castro, and John walks his two ten-years-younger half-sisters to school all the time and ties his sister's Punky Brewster shoes. Also, John has tres gay next door neighbors named Davinia and Robert, and he bakes cookies with them. Also, Davinia does his hair and helps him pick out his peg-legged ripped jeans. Rodney and Ronon have to go back in time to save teenage John's life from time-traveling Genii spies, and so they take the apartment across the hall. Rodney teaches math at John's high school, and John thinks he's stalking him and tells Davinia, just in case; Ronon discovers leather stores, buys many assless chaps, and discovers marijuana. graycastle has declared this a TOTALLY sensible and reasonable story idea, not AU at all, and part of her personal canon. She swears that every story she writes from now on will have this as a quiet background.

- The one where Rodney's mother is a Lacanian and his father a Jungian therapist. His homework included Lacanian algebra and a dream journal. (He's kinda screwed up.)

- The one where they get turned into pineapples. (Prompted by my despair at drawing John accurately in the margins of my notes: I don't get the hair spiky enough! I said. And then I try to make it more spiky! And then he looks like a pineapple!) John gets his wristband stuck on one of his fronds. Also, he likes to roll down hills. He and pineapple!Rodney must escape the villagers who want to eat them. They move by rustling their greenery. Rustlerustlerustle. - Aside: The one where they all get turned into plants. (Rodney, fyi, is an apple tree.)

- The one where John is wounded and stuck in the infirmary and then he and Rodney begin playing crazily competitive cribbage on an Ancient board that rearranges statistics in favor of the winner. (For example, Rodney is thinking that he wants a pudding cup when he wins, and the next thing he knows one of the cooking staff with an ATA gene brings him an extra pudding cup! And the more they concentrate on the cribbage, the bigger the things they get! Like, the ancient pegboard thing makes Zelenka's database search algorithm turn up a bone-healing device for John. Etc.)

- The one where we manage to turn John into one of the members of graycastle's dissertation committee, whom she describes as "kinda a robot." Me: "oh, like John!" *pause* "Can we turn John into him?" Of course we can! See, Teyla's in a relationship with Kate Heightmeyer and doesn't know why she can't talk about it, and finally Kate just gives up all exasperated and tells Telya look, read this gender theory. And Teyla, being Teyla, reads it carefully and seriously, perhaps taking notes, and then returns the ten books to Kate all "this is all fascinating! and I feel that I understand your people better, and also I understand why John must act the way he does. Though I do not think it is a good thing. But I still do not understand these references to Derrida." (bad aca-joke alert!) Anyway, she then continues to read Earth philosophy and theory -- Kate starts her off, at that point, with Kant, and then Hegel, which she apologizes for, but who Teyla finds much more comprehensible and straightforward than Kant. And then John is forcibly outed, see, and as he's being hauled off Atlantis Teyla rushes up to him, and hands him Epistemology of the Closet and says "you must read this now, John!" and of course John does, because he misses Teyla, and then he reads some more, and then he becomes an angry grad student writing about the Air Force and the queering of homosocial space, and then he becomes a robot on somebody's dissertation committee, the end.

- The one where Zelenka is sekritly teaching Ronon Science throughout season four, and Ronon is teaching Zelenka, like, lyric poetry or something, and then Rodney's "I can't get it finished in time! I don't have enough hands! Colonel, hold this -- no, that -- no, god, can't you -- stop moving!" And then Ronon just sorta shoulders in all "not a problem, McKay, I can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow while you swap crystals." HOT.

And also, a random tangent sent us of on the set of silly transformational fiction:- The one where they all get turned into DIFFERENT animals, thus queering the text even further! John is an easily-startled gazelle. Rodney is a badger. Teyla is a mink. Or maybe a mongoose. And Ronon we couldn't decide. Rhinocerous?

- The one where they all get turned into REPTILES, then! Where, naturally, Rodney is a turtle, John is a snake (graycastle said "boa constrictor!" I said "then he's hugging people all the time!" she said "yes but they're bad hugs!" and we decided to agree to disagree), Ronon is a Komodo dragon, and Teyla is a lizard. - Digression: the one where they get turned into Lisa Frank folder-cover type animals in a far corner of Atlantis (John and Teyla big-eyed cats, Rodney and Ronon floppy-eared dogs, all, of course, appearing in a magically-created pink converse high top). Then they reenact An Incredible Journey to get back to the control tower. They ford rivers! They run up flights of stairs! They are attacked by strange ancient machines! Big-eyed-black-and-white-cat John jumps on little-golden-retriever-puppy Rodney and bites his ears! etc.

- The one where they're not even all organisms! Teyla's a dolphin, Rodney's a unicorn, John's a rainbow, and Ronon's a breeze. Everyone tells John and Rodney that they can't get together because they're, hello, a rainbow and a unicorn, and sometimes the rainbow has to shine somewhere else. It is sad. Woe. (NOTE: This now exists. No, really.)

- The one where they're all items at a Pier One store. (See previous SGA-related post.) John is a red velvet throw pillow with tassels at the corners and a gold thread border. Rodney is a nice simple square chair. Ronon is a round wicker table. And Teyla is an elegant and understated table lamp. DUH.

- The one where they're all nineteenth century literary figures. (Teyla is George Sand.)- This also led to: - The One Where Teyla is George Sand And Wears a Top Hat Because That Would Be Hot, and Ronon is Chopin and Plays Awesome Piano Because That Would Be Hot. - The one where Rodney is Henry Fielding with his authorial insert thing. (Possibly John is Tom Jones. HA.) - The one where Ronon is James Joyce and Rodney is T.S. Elliot - The one where they're all 60s drug culture figures. (This features John as Ken Kesey, Rodney as Timothy Leary, Teyla as Neal Cassady, and Ronon as Hunter S. Thompson. We agree that Neal Cassady is perfect for Teyla.) - The one where Teyla is Shakespeare and John is Christopher Marlowe (who, for the purposes of this story, was OF COURSE a spy who faked his death in the bar brawl.) - The one where Teyla is Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Now, if only I could get my hands on the right settings for a ring modulator, I could do a Dalek halloween with robotic jack-o-lantern AND a Dalek Christmas with a whole album of Daleks creepily singing "Joy to the World." Which was last years' holiday dream for the Daleks. (Come on! Joy to the World! It would be awesome! I would so do it if I had the right settings for a ring modulator. Also, I would need a volunteer chorus. Also, maybe somebody would do some cover art with Daleks in the sky, all sparkly, for "Angels We Have Heard on High.")

... oddly, I feel like I have to post this using my Doctor Who holiday icon, because, hello, Doctor Who plus holiday! But it's Christmasy. But it's a Doctor Who holiday icon. I'm so torn!

I should not be permitted to get together with graycastle when I am trying to avoid work, because two things happen:

1. We invent a system of kin and gender relations for the Athosians that focuses on reproduction but still permits Teyla to be awesome and have lots of sex. (This largely involves declaring Teyla a "sworn virgin" in the Balkan sense, tacking on "on Athos" and making it a diplomatic position, declaring the Athosian hunting camps to be made up of two sodalities who are responsible collectively for all children, and then getting distracted and talking a lot about how Teyla would ask John for a child. And then about her subsequent pregnant lots-of-sex. And the fact that Jinto is totally her first son, two years after her blood. And Halling is the on-Athos kind of sworn virgin, responsible for keeping track of the brothers-of-blood (which is the only kin terminology we're using except mother: you have brothers-of-blood you can't sleep with, and your family, which you can. because we decided reproductive-obsessed people probably had incest taboos). Also, we got distracted a lot by imagining hilarious conversations between Teyla and John.)

2. We invent an Ancient device that turns ATA-having people into the opposite sex ... but they revert naturally (after at least an hour for the body to recover), but only at the point at which they are uncomfortable in their bodies. So the first few times, it's an hour even, and everybody's freaked out, but maybe the sixth or seventh time Rodney's so distracted by Science that he doesn't notice and become bothered for an hour and ten minutes, and then an hour and a half, and then he starts to get used to it... Which means slowly increasing Rodney and John's time as a girl, as they become more used to the body, but which also means that the experience of two-bodiedness (and the transition from "Lorne" to "Lorne as a girl" to "Lorne in any guise" ) will itself prevent two-bodiedness. As they become more comfortable as women, they stay women longer and longer and longer...

ALSO it means that every fannish genderswap trope would in fact be a stimulus to end the body swap: Cadman shows up with a bra? bamf! (1) goes Rodney, back to a boy; but maybe the next time he puts the bra on. Attempting to have sex? bamf! Menstrual cycle? bamf! Also, the device goes off randomly, which starts the process again. But it takes a different amount of time in every individual, depending on available caloric energy.(2) So Rodney, with his endless powerbars, is like a ten-minute-warning for the rest of the expedition. "We've been evaluating the procedbamfures for use of the ZPM, and ... *presses button for radio* attention, please, we are having another Stupid Ancient Device Episode."

Anyway, clearly hijinks ensue.

(1) We imagine this as a bit like Nightcrawler in the comics. No, you know, heading to the infirmary or anything. Just... walking along and bamf!

(2) Because Rodney as an early warning device is hilarious. Also, this permits them to sometimes change offworld. Which is also hilarious. Imagine, if you will:

Rodney off with scientist, exploring... grain bins or something. John et al doing meet-and-great. John hears Rodney's voice over the radio: "Colonel! Colonel! I need you to come here right now!" (Attempting, of course, to act as his early warning system.) John, attempting to be placating at Chief Whosits: "We come here as peaceful bamf! traders."

What I did do today: watched Doctor Who. Shared vids. Ate out-of-season strawberries. And, with graycastle, developed a plot for an imaginary, never-to-be-written 400k story that would totally explain John Sheppard and also? Would give him two sisters ten years younger than he is, and a dad who's an itinerant tuba player in San Francisco, and a rent-controlled apartment in the Castro, and gay next-door neighbors named George and Davinia. Who John was always baking cookies with and things, and then he'd stayed up late to give them to his dad, but his dad didn't get home until four am, because: itinerant tuba player. And he would do his sister's hair in pigtails, and walk them to school, and tie his youngest sister's punky brewster shoes, and he totally didn't have friends his own age: just the leopard-print wearing Davinia next door, and his little sisters. And Davinia would come over and spike his hair up for him and be like a mom, and he called her Aunt Davinia, and now he's totally blind to Teh Gay unless it's Teh Totally Obvious Gay Wearing Leopard Print and Assless Chaps. ALSO, it was set in the mid 80s, AND fit all of the great fannish cliches in one story: we did time-travel! we did Rodney-as-John's teacher! we did John-thinks-Rodney's-stalking-him! we did narrow escapes! we did Ronon-in-the-leather-goods store! we considered amnesia!

Then, just as a coup de grace, we decided that Rodney's parents were both THERAPISTS, and that this totally explains Rodney. And they fought all the time, because dad was a Lacanian, and mom was a Jungian goddess-worshipper, and Rodney's verbal diarrhea is because they would sit him down and ask him to explain his feelings for hours, and his only defense was to talk about petty stuff. And they'd argue about his piano lessons, and what they were supposed to accomplish for his personal growth, and Rodney was all "I just like piano, dad!" Also, this is probably funny to, like, three people in the whole wide world.

In any case: this means that I still have to do all my reading by four pm tomorrow. WHATever. Davinia and the itinerant tuba player are way more fun.

So! graycastle and I have decided that we need to do a project. A very important project. A project that will represent the spirit and ideas of individual fandoms.

We want to find two-second clips from shows that say what those shows really mean. Ideally only one character.

This thought, see, was precipitated by me trying to explain the premise of the Sentinel, and then playing the first few minutes of the Sentinel, and then pausing it on a certain line to say "... well, actually, that kinda sums it up right there."

The line was Jim, talking to the SWAT guys at the beginning of the episode. He looked anxious and armed, and he said "Do you smell that?" That, my friend, is the Sentinel.

We decided that Fraser's first-came-to-Chicago was too obvious for due South, and graycastle voted for "Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. If you don't mind." I voted for "Hi, dad. How're you?" "I'm dead, son. Other than that, do you mean?" Except it's two characters, woe.

And my Buffy choice is, of course, "All right, I get it, you're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?"

graycastle talked about Dalek carolers, and this sparked in me a desire to make an album of Dalek choirs singing Christmas carols. Featured songs: Silent Night, Joy to the World, Carol of the Bells, What Child is This... and other stuff we haven't thought of yet. (Obviously these are new series Daleks, with a Dalek god and Dalek heresies.) It would be GREAT.

No, seriously, imagine for a moment a Dalek chorus doing Joy to the World. Especially that last verse. "He rules the world with truth and grace, / And makes the nations prove / The glories of His righteousness, / And wonders of His love, / And wonders of His love, / And wonders, wonders, of His love." AWESOME.

ONLY! I don't have a Moog MF-102 ring modulator, which is the modulator BBC Radiophonics used to do Dalek voices. I just have a VST ring modulator plugin, and no idea what the Dalek Voice settings would be (fiddling got me a sorta-cyberman, but not the exact right lag for Daleks). And my google-fu has failed me.

You know you want to help me out! Because then I will make a whole album. And we can share and glory in Daleks singing "Angels we have on heard high / Sweetly singing o'er the plains / And the mountains in reply / Echoing their joyous strains." And it will be kinda scary, because the coverart will include scenes of flying Daleks from "Doomsday," but also it will be hilarious awesome.

Is it totally wrong of me to imagine a Buffyverse and HP constructed reality vid to Echo's Children's "Least of My Kind?"

We've got Oz and Veruca and "Phases" and "Wild at Heart." And Nina and the werewolf who bites her being killed by a silver pen. And Remus Lupin and, well, not yet in a movie, Fenrir, and Sirius-as-a-dog thumping Remus-as-a-wolf. And, and "werewolves don't usually walk alone / think on the battle-cost; this time the wolf has lost / beaten and broken and blind / better beware, my lord; better prepare, my lord / I was the least of my kind." Especially because film werewolves usually are packless. And Oz's huh would be hilarious used to illustrate beaten and broken and blind. And, and, Buffy and Angel and Sirius and Harry as "my lord" killing them. And, and Willow locking Oz in his cage. And wouldn't it be great?

So yesterday I gave my sister the part of her (v. belated) birthday present that she didn't already know about. (The part she did know about couldn't be a surprise -- we went to the yarn store in Orinda, and she picked out her first yarn, and I got her bamboo needles to match and a cheapo practice yarn to futz with first, and taught her to knit.) Anyway, I got her a card game that won both best party game of the year AND Mensa's best game award -- which is a really odd combination, you have to admit -- and yesterday we pulled it out after dessert and played four games and our whole group of early-to-bed-ers stayed up until after midnight and didn't even notice and laughed hysterically. I pulled muscles laughing so hard. And then today we played again after dinner -- "just one short game" that turned into three games, with much giggling. In short: I highly recommend Apples to Apples.

Also, I have this ridiculous plot bunny where, see, there are these NID-related bad guys who have an Ancient artifact that will Do Impressive Stuff, but they don't know exactly what, and they want to find out, and they go all "huh, we need really smart guys who won't shoot us" and then they think "hey, we have handy connections to the government and know all about these civilian consultants" and then they kidnap Daniel Jackson and Charlie Eppes because they think the two of them will be, you know, polite and malleable and little wussy civilians. And wham! The two of them are thrown into a cell together (in an abandoned warehouse, natch) and Daniel's all "Doctor Daniel Jackson, linguistics and archaeology, but I imagine they want me because I'm a polyglot -- I've done some translation work as a consultant with the government." (This is largely because I want Daniel to say "polyglot" instead of being all "hey, I speak 43 languages because I'm a linguist.") And Charlie's all "how odd, I'm Doctor Charlie Eppes, applied math, and I do consulting work with the government too."

And so they work out that The Baddies must want them to do some work, and Daniel's all "well, whatever it is, we can't do it," and Charlie asks why, and Daniel says "I take civilian consulting jobs -- don't you?" and Charlie says yes, and Daniel's all "well, I didn't turn anyone down recently, which means it must be something bad enough that they couldn't even imagine asking me in a more... standard way." And then Charlie starts freaking out, but it only lasts a minute because he's trying to be all reasonable and practical and because he knows Don will come get him. And he asks why Daniel isn't freaking out, and Daniel's all "oh, government work, weirdest things happen to you, and my team's always managed to get me out."

And obviously the baddies need Daniel's input first -- he has to do the translation so Charlie can do the math parth that will make it go boom -- and they try to be threatening but Daniel's all raised-eyebrow and crossed-arms at them, and he points out to Charlie that they can't try to get Charlie to do the math until Daniel does his part, so obviously it's Charlie's job to think of a way out of there while The Baddies haul Daniel away to a different room and try to be scarier than the Goa'uld, which Daniel is completely unimpressed by. And Charlie's left perusing the cell and trying to put escape plans together and estimating the weight-bearing load of the air ducts and thinking about ways to send a message or leave a clue.

And meanwhile back in L.A. Don's getting nervous about Charlie, and Larry notices he's missed a class, and they start trying to look for him, which gets the attention of the SGC and General O'Neill, who is naturally really worried about Daniel and thinks that Charlie's disappearance would be a ridiculous coincidence, and so Jack flies off to L.A. so that he can smile tightly at Don and make oblique threats about having the investigation taken away if Don doesn't cooperate, and insist on being called "General," and Don gets all crabby about jurisdiction, and sends Terry and David off to investigate and report only to him, and Larry's making tentative comments and trying to keep them from killing each other. But Jack and Don both diss the other's consultants, and then Jack has to be all "okay, I'll admit it, he's a pain but, well, he once was imprisoned by some folks who spoke a language he didn't and inside of a day he'd worked out their culture and some of their language and made friends and his guard ending up defending him -- he's that good, and that's why they want him, and that's why I know we'll get him back, because he don't take no shit." And Don's all "look, I didn't want Charlie to work for me just because he was my brother, right? He can do this shit in his head, and he's always been able to, I'm lucky to have him since he could be consulting with anybody, don't let his record put you off, he'll just keep picking at a problem until he solves it, and in this case that problem is his imprisonment." And Larry ignores the whole thing and just keeps pondering the problem because he wants Charlie back.

And then some other stuff happens, and Daniel and Charlie bond, and they escape/get rescued, and then start going out for coffee, and Daniel finds out that Charlie has a high enough security clearance to hear about the Stargate, so he invites Charlie to the SGC, and Charlie is intrigued but not enough to leave L.A., and I guess it has to end sorta bittersweet long-distance relationship because obviously Charlie's not leaving his house or his work with Don, and Daniel's not leaving the Stargate program, but it would still be fun.

And, having made it through lord alone knows how many Sentinel-bonding stories, I feel entitled to be random and post Funny IM Conversations. Because I know you all care what waywardwords and I think would happen if the actors in Top Gun were played by ducks, or what darthrami and I theorized about the NID's curtains. Or maybe just because I don't want to lose said randomness later.

And when darthrami was over, we briefly talked about the fandoms that could actually support curtainfic. Later, on lj:

eruthros: Also? Maybourne totally has a crush on Jack O'Neill.darthrami: :-)eruthros: Seriously! I mean, he's always calling from the Cayman Islands and wanting to know how Jack's doing...darthrami: ...darthrami: does he ask about curtains?eruthros: No.eruthros: Usually he asks about the NID and if they're all managing to stay disentangled from the Shadow Government sorta thing.darthrami: ahhhhdarthrami: does he ask about the shadow government's curtains? ( NID Curtainfic )

I can't help but want to vid Girlyman's new "On the Air." It's narrative, it's got a gorgeous intro, it's about change, and I can listen to it over and over. Plus, how often do you hear a song that would work best for Willow season 6, but also has potential for Fraser's move to Chicago? Or even Jack's transition to general in season 8? ("I walked out when we were live / Cause I knew I was made for bigger screens than just / That small time comedy, just a half hour parody / It was cinema marquees for me or bust...)

'Cause there was a time you knowWhen I had my own live showIt was improvised for the camera's eyeIt was made up in the ringBack when Bob Hope was kingBack when every choice felt rightBack when life was black and white

Now there's one thing I regretHow I wish I didn't careHow I wish I could forgetThat I was someone then when we were on the air...

I watched X2 again last night, so now I have "I Am What I Am" (Gloria Gaynor) stuck in my head.

Sung by Mystique, natch. In a big stage number. Possibly while wearing feathers. "Life's not worth a damn till you can shout out 'I am what I am.'"

I wonder if the X-Men movie metaphors are cumulative? First movie, Jewish. Second movie, Jewish and gay. Third movie, Jewish and gay and ... ?

I am what I amAnd what I am needs no excusesI deal my own deckSometimes the aces Sometimes the deucesIt's one life and there's no return and no depositOne life so it's time to open up your closetLife's not worth a damn Till you can shout outI am what I am

I haven't read it yet, so I don't know if it's any good. I'm just staring at the pairing list in astonishment (Hermione/(Wini)Fred, Wesley/Draco, Giles/Severus, with side pairings of Harry/Ginny and Remus/Sirius). I mean.

***

Yesterday, I had a sudden and entirely inexplicable desire to vid to Sondheim. To "Agony" and the reprise. Starsky and Hutch. Snarky-vid.

No, see, it makes a ton of sense because it's all about outcompeteing each other in terms of maximum angst and it's got lines like " What's as intriguing-- / Or half so fatiguing-- / As what's out of reach?" and isn't that the major S&H relationships with women in a nutshell? And. And. "Agony! Beyond power of speech, / When the one thing you want / Is the only thing out of your reach" "Agony! Far more painful than yours! / When you know she would go with you, / If there only were doors!" And. Yes. Plus with the subtle slashiness. "Hutch: Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, / Passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome, / And heir to the throne? Starsky: You are everything maidens could wish for. Hutch: Then why no? Starsky: Do I know? Hutch: The girl must be mad!" With the reprise and the trauma of always wanting different women who are out of reach because you're undercover or they're dead and anyway you always want a different woman every week and. It's perfect. Really. It does make sense.

This is very unhealthy, as I'm leaving the country in three weeks. And as I have absolutely no vidding experience or equipment. And no source. And it's ridiculous.

If I ignore it, perhaps it will go away.

***

Also? Why are professors on television always both evil and boring? Couldn't they be at least interesting lecturers if they're going to be evil?

We just saw the episode of Starsky and Hutch with the crazy Philosophy of Crime prof. I winced a lot.

***

And there was something else, but I've forgotten it now. Ahh, Sundays.

'Cause when I told m_shell about the collection of Lovecraft and Holmes crossover short stories, she said "no Cthulhu Holmes!" and I heard "no Cthulhu/Holmes." (I would now like to see slash with tentacles. "Come now. The only way Cthulhu won't destroy the world is if I sacrifice myself, Watson. It must be done for England!" Etc.)

Dude. Now I have a sudden desire to write a Potterverse story based around the quest for wand and cauldron -- we've got Merlin already, yah? And we have the grail/cauldron/chalice, symbol of the womb. The cauldron heals the wounded, brings back the dead, and satisfies every need. And we have the wand/spear. We can do the Arthurian quest for the grail as quest for cauldron/chalice/grail, quest for the other half of the masculine magic -- without the cauldron, the wand is weak.

Later, the wand and the cauldron together make Hogwarts... I'm so rambling.

Or... good heavens. I actually, suddenly, and without intending to actually came up with a good reason to do a "Harry and Snape must get married to destroy Voldemort." The Great Marriage of Wand and Cauldron. The balance of masculine and feminine that could take down the Dark Lord. And the wand that will not turn on its owner is born of the cauldron. Even MPREG, because of the association of the spear thrust into the cauldron and fertility. Dear god.